Gadget envy: Why Tito Sotto’s plagiarism fails the ‘So What? Test’

Not to put too fine a point to it but Philippine Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto III is now the laughingstock of the country. His consistent failure to recognise the errors in the way he allegedly lifted material verbatim from several bloggers’ works to use in a speech he delivered to defend his position against the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill and his inability to rectify the damage he caused not only to his reputation but to that of the Senate by simply apologising for it has attracted much scorn from the chattering classes.

Tito Sotto, is a product of the system Filipinos built for themselves. As a comedian — a trade where he became a household name long before he started his career in politics — Sotto, along with his partners-in-crime Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon, exhibited a talent for delivering to his audience exactly what they wanted: low-brow entertainment. Sotto was selling a Filipino media staple. Much the same way as Filipinos like rice with their pagpag on their plates, they like Tito-Vic-and-Joey humour with their basketball game on their TV screens. And when when you are selling food (whether it is for the mind or the stomach) to people to whom the concept of “choice” involves deciding to go to bed on an empty stomach (or mind) or not, it does not really matter where said food comes from.

So Sotto took some material from a bunch of bloggers. The question is quite simple:

So what?

I direct that question not to myself or my immediate community of fellow writers (to whom that question actually does matter) but to the people that really matter to politicians. If a big swath of Filipino humanity couldn’t care less about which dark back alley food they are paying good money for comes from why would they care about where their politicians’ rhetoric comes from?

That is a quote that introduces a Fortune.comarticle on the subject of the recent $1bn tech giant Apple won from a copyright infringement suit it slapped against South Korean conglomerate Samsung over technology allegedly “stolen” from Apple’s iPhone product line. While it may have been convenient to simply pin the $1bn malaise on the Big Bad Chaebol, the article goes further to explore what may possibly be the deeper roots of the issue…

It might have something to do with South Korea’s education system says Tariq Hussain author of “Diamond Dilemma: Shaping Korea for the 21st Century.” “The education system is the cradle of cheating and bribery, one of Korea’s biggest diseases,” he explains. “Titles count for a lot in Korea, academic titles even more. So given this excessive focus on such titles, there is an incentive to, well, bend the rules, or even cheat. And occasionally these things are uncovered and lead to the demise of the person involved.” Plagiarism in all sectors of [education] is rife he adds.

And while that may be true, there is also something to be said about a market so successfully-conditioned by clever state-of-the-art marketing to salivate over iPhone technology to the point of not really giving much of a hoot about where affordable technology of that sort may come from. Indeed, the object of contention, Samsung’s Galaxy S III smartphone, unlike works of plagiarism closer to home, is actually a winner as far as its users are concerned…

The “flagship” Galaxy S III smartphone, introduced in June, was particularly well reviewed — CNET awarded it an Editor’s Choice rating — and sold briskly. According to Samsung, it took the company less than a month to sell 10 million units, helping vault Samsung — and Android — well ahead of Apple and iOS in this summer’s race for smartphone supremacy.

Come back closer to the issue and behold: The same people who incessantly tweet about their “indignation” over Sotto’s plagiarism are also the most gleeful promoters of Samsung products and other “must have” gadgetry.

‘Come back closer to the
issue and behold: The
same people who
incessantly tweet about
their â€œindignationâ€ over
Sottoâ€™s plagiarism are
also the most gleeful
promoters of Samsung
products and other
â€œmust haveâ€ gadgetry.
Seems like we all really’

I really enjoy this site, very open and realistic ang approach ng mga articles. Just my 2 cents regarding the Tito Sotto issue – the fact that he is a Senator (just like “celebrities”), he is “automatically” a public figure – more so, he has a huge responsibility to serve the country and his countrymen. I’m pretty sure he’s not the first politician to plagiarize, but his move to pursue a law against “cyber-bullying” and even suing bloggers – it’s just too much to cover up his mess. All I can say is: I think the Philippines has bigger problems… Read more »